Musings on sustainable living

Author: obtusata

This year, I’m enrolled in Green Indy Blog’sEssential Zero Waste Blueprint course. It’s 12 months of lessons and an online community to help you find ways to reduce your waste. I’m a little bit behind, but still committed to learning as much as I can and to making some changes.

The program starts in the kitchen and one of the recommendations is to do a one-week trash audit. I’ve done a trash audit before, but I decided that it would be useful to do a new audit. I also decided to do it right away, despite knowing that the week I picked was unusual for me. I knew that I would have more trash than usual because I had rescued some plastic wrapped food from a neighbour who was moving and I was expecting a couple of parcels.

The focus was on kitchen trash, but I only have two trash zones: my bathroom (mainly dental floss and all the hair and dust I sweep up in my apartment) and my kitchen (everything else). Though I only have immediate access to a garbage dumpster and a recycling dumpster, I split my garbage up into the following categories:

Garbage

Anything that can’t be recycled, composted or reused

Typically just plastic

Always bagged tightly to keep it from blowing away into the environment (assuming a dumpster diver doesn’t tear it open)

I currently don’t have access to compost and I’m not comfortable dumping it in the nearest green space as I know that homeless people live there and I choose to respect their space

In the desperate hope that it might get separated or avoid being wrapped in plastic, I dump this in the dumpster loose (no bag)

Recycling

Anything that I can’t or won’t reuse and that my city can recycle

Properly washed, labels removed, etc.

Reusables

Anything that I think I can reuse

Typically boxes, bottles, paper, rubber bands, or bags that I can use for the garbage

A couple of years ago, I would have focused mostly on the garbage category. But, the point of a trash audit is to look at *all* of the trash you produce and consider where you can make some changes. This could mean buying more plastic free foods, focusing on reducing food waste, or finding new ways to re-purpose or reuse items.

Recycling is neither guaranteed nor the best option. Given the low rate of recycling, I prefer to avoid as much packaging as possible or to choose items in packaging that I can reuse, such as glass jars. Though, to be fair, that’s not a perfect solution either, as evident by the vast number of wee bottles that I’ve been storing but not using.

Reusing is a subjective category that depends on my needs and what items I already have on hand. Given that I have a limited amount of space, I can’t just accumulate potentially useful things until I use them or find someone who can use them. So, it’s better to avoid generating trash, even if it’s potentially recyclable or reusable.

As for the compostables, I’d be much happier if I had access to a compost pile, but I also don’t generate much compost as I tend to be careful about buying what I need and using as much of the food items as possible (for example, I use the whole broccoli, not just the florets). Yes, I have researched or tried various in-home compost options, including worms. No, none of them work for me at this time.

So, how to do a trash audit: keep everything and review what you have at the end of the week. I find it easiest if I categorize as much as possible during the process (separating major categories, as I accumulate trash) and if I wash packaging when I do my dishes to avoid the stench of decaying food.

At the end of the week, I did nothing. I hadn’t been smart enough to start on a weekend and I’d had a long day by the time I was ready to start the auditing process. I got as far as placing things on my drop-cloth and sorted things into piles after work the next day.

This is most of the trash I generated (missing are the hobby scraps, the food waste and a few random things from my work day, which I forgot to add to this pile).

It’s at this point that you review what you have and consider why you have it and what kinds of changes you might be willing to make. There’s a lot of advice online for what to consider and what kinds of alternatives you can look at. But, I believe that this is a fairly personal thing that has to be based on what’s sustainable (do-able) for you.

In my next post, I’ll review my trash by discussing some of the items and categories I had.